CHAPTER VI
THE ATOUTS OF THE TAROTS
Since the creation of the world mankind has realized a divine power shaping his destiny, and has tried to conciliate the unknown god. Since life is made up of happenings that are unforeseen, man believed that certain occult powers directed and shaped them. It was natural, therefore, to try to ascertain the wishes of the controller of fate, so that they might be complied with and misfortune thus averted.
Invocations, sacrifices and queries, private or public in the temples, are recorded from early days. Some have been found that date from at least five thousand years before Christ. Directions for “wave offerings,” “burnt offerings,” etc., are frequent in the Old Testament. The commands for marking the “rods” with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, for the purpose of laying them on the altar and awaiting results when the wishes of the Lord would be revealed, are given in Numbers xvii. Prayers to Nebo, Thoth, and Mercury are found everywhere in the countries where they were worshipped. The use of divining arrows (rods), when demanding the wishes of the gods, is a known historic fact, so it is readily seen whence the Egyptians received their inspiration to gather together the customs, ceremonies and superstitions of alien religions, to absorb them in the worship of their god Thoth.
The temples of the Egyptian gods were generally gorgeously decorated, and those of Thoth were filled besides with learned women and men who devoted the result of their studies to the common good, without a thought of self-aggrandisement. They made themselves the go-between of Thoth and man, when revealing the wishes of the occult beings. The number of Hermetic Books, written at Thoth’s dictation, is given by Jamblichus as 20,000.
Naturally, when sacrifices or offerings were made, the worshipper demanded a reply to his inquiries, thus taxing the ingenuity of the prophets, who were, in fact, no wiser than himself as to the predestinations recorded at birth. So, sometimes they found the desires of the gods hidden in the entrails of animals or in the palms of the hands.
Astronomers and astrologers, observing that the heavenly bodies conformed to certain laws, decided that these laws also governed the lives of men. In the worship of Ishtar, the great Babylonian goddess, who has been identified with both Venus and Diana, the flight of birds had portent; while at the oracle of Delphi straws (a variant of the rods of Aaron or the divining arrows of the Asiatics) were employed to ascertain the wishes of the gods, and it is the descendants of these that are now sometimes known as Jackstraws, that came to us from the Chinese, and at others are identified as the pip cards now in common use.
A close study of each card of the old Tarots reveals much of the history of the book and its original intention, for the resemblance of the different cards to the different Egyptian deities is clearly displayed to the student. The attributes and costumes of Maut, Isis, Phthah, Neith, Amun, Thmei, Nepte, Seth, Anubis, and Ra are all to be traced on the detached leaves of the ancient book. The costumes are those of Italians of about the thirteenth century, it is true, but the caps, the girdles, the positions and the attributes, as well as the qualities assigned to each by the fortune-tellers, are too apparent to be ignored. It would seem that the cards were designed by some person to whom these different marks had been described, but who had no knowledge of the original pictures of these gods that are still so instructive in Egypt. While the attributes are retained, the pictures do not recall the old ones that can still be found in mummy cases or historic monuments. It was therefore impossible for those who wrote on Playing Cards before the great discoveries in Egypt to recognize the connection of the Tarots with the ancient mysteries, although the symbols of Mercury might have given a clue, had these been noted.